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Ohio AG Asks Court to Stop Payments to FirstEnergy Nuke Plants
FirstEnergy Solutions (now called Energy Harbor) allegedly paid $60 million in bribes to (now former) Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four of his associates to gain their assistance in passing the hugely unpopular House Bill 6 (see FirstEnergy Involved in Bribery Scheme to Pass $1B Nuke Bailout Law). HB 6, which became law, gives Energy Harbor $1.1 billion in ratepayer funds over seven years to prop up the company’s uneconomic nuclear power plants (disadvantaging other energy sources, like gas-fired power plants). Ohio’s Attorney General is asking a bankruptcy court to stop those annual $150 million payments.
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Ohio’s oil and natural gas producers via OOGEEP (Ohio Oil & Gas Energy Education Program) have just launched a major statewide public awareness campaign dubbed Essential Ohio Energy. The campaign includes (so far) two TV commercials (we have both embedded below). OOGEEP is spending big money to blanket the state and remind folks of the key role played by fossil fuels in every single aspect of their lives. We need to see more of this kind of thing.
We spotted a great editorial in an Ohio newspaper that succinctly and accurately describes what will happen in Ohio if Joe Biden’s environmental socialism program (cost of $2 trillion) actually gets implemented. What would happen? Some 700,000 jobs in Ohio will disappear. So too will some $245 billion in Ohio GDP (gross domestic product). It is, literally, a nightmare.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Biden’s assault on free speech in Pennsylvania re fracking; PA Congressmen speaks out regarding commonwealth fracking concerns; Shale producers see gas curtailments differently as prices still slide; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: California’s Faustian bargain: you get the electricity you pay for; NATIONAL: Are there signs of green shoots in U.S. shale oil production?; Petrochemical manufacturing to drive U.S. ethane production growth into 2021; Biden’s assault on ‘shareholder capitalism’.
In June the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), in coordination with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) published final rules to allow LNG (liquefied natural gas) to be safely transported by special rail cars (see 
We spotted a story from ace reporter Paul Gough (Pittsburgh Business Times) titled, “5 things to know about Pennsylvania’s new energy report.” According to Gough, earlier this week PA released a new “Pennsylvania Energy Jobs Overview” report. Wait, what? Why didn’t the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) or Gov. Wolf’s office issue a press release to announce this new report? We don’t know why, but they didn’t. The DEP did issue a press release about an uptick in jobs in the so-called renewable energy sector–but nothing about all the other forms of energy. However, we have a copy of the full report (below). It shows the total number of jobs in the Marcellus/Utica went down last year by 7.4%, or 1,897 jobs lost.
Last week we brought you the bombshell news that Southwestern Energy is buying out and merging in Montage Resources in an all-stock deal worth roughly $857 million (see 
Range Resources is running up the debt tab. In January the company issued $550 million in new notes (debt, IOUs) which they used to turn around and pay down older notes (see 
Today is “notes” day on MDN. Yesterday three major Marcellus/Utica drillers, including Southwestern, Range, and the subject of this post–Antero Resources–all said they are issuing notes, or what we think of as IOUs (debt) in varying amounts. All of the notes issued are for the same reason–to pay down debt. Issue new debt to pay down old debt. Only in the world of high finance! For Antero, the company is issuing $250 million with an extra option to issue another $50 million, or $300 million total, potentially.
At a ceremony in Pittsburgh last week, federal EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Administrator Andrew Wheeler unveiled two new rules for the oil and natural gas industry that removes ineffective and duplicative methane detection requirements while streamlining others (see 
Yesterday our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report, the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR estimates how much oil and natural gas each of the country’s seven largest shale plays produced in the previous (i.e. current) month, and how much each will produce in the coming (i.e. next) month. The August report, which predicts production for the coming month of September, estimates natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica will decrease by 203 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d)–the biggest (by far) decrease in any of the seven shale plays tracked.
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy, The Conservation Fund, and Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) yesterday issued a joint announcement that MVP is paying $19.5 million to the Conservancy to “conserve land along the Trail corridor and support outdoor recreation-based economies in Virginia and West Virginia.” It is the largest “funding package” in the Conservancy’s history to advance conservation efforts in a single geography.
“Hurry it up, will ya?” That was the upshot of a message sent by TC Energy to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) with respect to giving final approval for its Louisiana XPress project. FERC granted the project a favorable environmental assessment (EA) on February 6 (see